Comment

FROM ALL INDIA EX- SOLDIER’S LEAGUE.////////////
TO HOME MINISTER OF PARTITIONED INDIA.
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Firstly: Greetings from our Fraternity//////////
Secondly: Our fraternity connects with issues, which concern the soldier in anyway, his contribution to his society and takes these up as these surface from time to time. It is our privilege to draw your attention to currently much touted reflections on use of military power on home front. ////////////////
Thirdly: On a broader horizon we veterans and fellow compatriots must now need to assure that in the face of battering that leadership is getting across board in all walks of national life including the military on a daily basis, as soldiers we are laying down our lives for a cause that has not been highjacked for anything else other than call of duty in defence of the country and its righteous policies.
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Fourthly: The strong signal that there is still pressure for direct military intervention in Naxal ridden eastern belt where we have ironically lost writ in over 200 districts, if true has very ominous foreboding. Even if not, that we were readying for this is in itself an indictment of the political class, its credibility to represent the people even while flaunting Gandhian principles and collecting power in his name. That the health of the nation more than six decades after independence should compel a PM to identify Naxal menace as the biggest threat is implicit confession of disconnect between governance and aspirations of masses. A failure in putting the right political model and doctrine in place to start with in 1947.///////////////
Fifthly: For the military arm to be used against its own people is an anathema, its gross miss -employment with ramifications that can have calamitous consequences. Past military intervention as a tool of political aggrandizement to bail out from fiascos committed in pursuit of political agenda, such as Operations Pawan and Blue Star only left scars the full impact of which remained overlooked, brushed under, or undetected. When this surfaced with vengeance as in Blue Star it left a deep gash on military integrity, cohesion and trust at all levels down the chain of command from which we have not fully recovered. The Army was broken were it to have faced an external threat at the same time. Government driven by bad civil and military advice abetting militancy for local gains then engaging with its consequences at great cost in lives of soldiers and innocent civilians, placing military reputation at stake and seriously denting peoples goodwill towards their military. The end result a loss of face, as of today surrender of strategic space in South and planting roots of militancy in West for times to come. These lessons must remain fresh while J&K simmers as the worst unsettled crisis with NE close next, two widely separated fronts resting on international boundaries with Nepal totally alienated. We have no friends any more but encircled by hostile neighbours of our own making. The opening of an internal military front can only convey collapse of central authority and its law enforcement agencies, which are not being held accountable for losing the trust of the people else they cannot have corroded their capability and effectiveness as they have. Substituting these by the army would be drawing it into a debilitating, unproductive and incompatible mission from which it will be difficult to extricate and avert human rights and other stand offs with grave fallout on officer soldier trust and further alienation of the people. A logjam of this nature will be a salutary coup in interest of externally manipulated interests, which are already at play. The military is not a panacea for remedying the effects of socio economic malaise onus for which in democracy must lie squarely with the political authority. Our politics is unambiguously unprincipled reduced to an auto programmed mechanism as a service for amassing wealth at every level of authority and practice of democracy, so much so that the State itself is generating much of the threat it perceives by throwing up islands of vulgar ultra prosperity in face of advancing ocean of disaffection and deprivation. Over 300 million are still destitute. BBC report of 16th May informs the world that Indian children in villages are eating mud to ward off hunger. The country’s wealth is shared between 35 odd business houses and around 500 political families, our policies dictated by dubious and indescribable interests. Ambanis can hold the nation to ransom while an American Secretary of State can make us take any U turn into a blind alley. Every national activity is outsourced, reduced to gambling and racketeering from cricket ostensibly a sport now a mass money minting drug peddled by politicians and cartels, to education left to profiteers, elitists, opulent neo colonial interests, inaccessible to masses and redundant as knowledge base. We are a nation without a language for convenience of a few. Millions of rural children are denied basic quality of life in schooling and health. State arrogance and corruption have substituted for efficiency and order. That a minister responsible for food should brush aside his own created price rise and advise abstinence is as reprehensible as advocating violence as tool for retribution. More dangerous the invisible threat generated by renegade leaders of all hues, the virtual dismantling of the State by privatization of its strategic responsibilities and assets, the non-accountability of its organs and moral improbity of its functionaries making us a vulnerable laughing stock. When the State becomes insensitive to right and wrong it is oppressive and anti people. Today it is captive to the most malicious version of capitalism stripped of all values, self-esteem and national pride right from the top to down, losing credibility as a nation. The word Indian does not connect with words dignity and character much more today than ever. The lobby quick to cite cheers from others and deflect attention from realities creating illusions is indicative of the degree of penetration effected, a manifestation of lack of self-assurance and inferiority complex in the creamy class which has no genius of its own look aping models from outside which makes it purchasable. To discerning the country is sliding into milieu as existing with the arrival of the East India Company, 600 feudalities now replaced by more ruthless and deceptive power centres. We now have a more onerous task, that of cleansing governance-mustering courage for war against role of money overriding everything else in public and private life. To start with the HM may like to take some concrete steps to signal the stemming of renegade tide by introducing some measures to counter the root causes for Governments concerns such as Mao by //////////
 State funding for elections and striking down political indiscipline.///////////
 Measures for horizontal proliferation of quality of life by generating opportunities through skills and disciplines at rural levels, warding off collapse of agricultural class, tackle water, education and sanitation on war footing. ////////////
 Ban on gambling in any sports.//////////
 Enforcing an honour code and fixing measure of culpability commensurate with station and office by laying down a criterion for conduct and behaviour by public and corporate servants alike.//////////
 Curbs on growing predilection for free wheeling and libertine opulent lifestyle as has seized the middle and rich classes in cities creating further divisions in society and attributable to unregulated consumerism setting a race for acquiring redundancy wrongly peddled as growth thus undermining Gandhian precepts. /////////////
 Obligatory National Service as criteria for holding key public offices, acquiring educational and management credentials. ///////////
 Identifying and proclaiming a moral code as anchor for guidance of the State by dedication to the legacy of Ashok the Great to which we lay claims symbolically but dismiss his State wisdom in practices and conduct of our affairs. His edicts must be taught in every school to instill a sense of order and pride in what we do and how we think, to act as a deterrent to vulnerabilities and weaknesses inherent in heterogeneous capitalist society. We must avert a class war through our own genius from the past. A State must run on a super doctrine without which its people and components will be no different from flakes of simbal (cotton) blown by wind in different directions as we presently are.////////////////
Sixthly: The people await a major change to be ushered as disillusionment is deepening and encroaching. We entreat due cognizance be taken of what is written on the wall./////////
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THE END
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